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IOC Orders Blogger To Take Down Video
An anonymous reader writes "The International Olympic Committee has ordered a blogger to remove a video from his website showing the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili. The IOC asserts that it owns all the rights to all images taken at the games, and only licensed broadcasters can use them. However, the blogger, Stephen Pate, points to a Canadian law that allows copyrighted images to be used in newsworthy cases."
The IOC has taken an extreme protectionist stance on all its content for many years. It doesn't matter if it's fair use or not, the IOC will object on principle.
The Olympics are big money.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Sorry... I've been writing software for 25 years, and my fingers pretty much automatically spell it "queue"... what's really sad is that somebody on slashdot has corrected me for this same exact mistake before! But hey... without spelling Nazis, how are we going to learn?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
If you comply with laws from all over the world then you can't post anything online.
Remember, if you're a copyright holder, you'd better be prepared to suck it down. The internet is a global network, and the law varies all over the world.
Fixed it for you.
Well, IOC, for all I care you can keep it.
Could you keep it far away so at least the TV channels ain't clogged with your crap and I could actually watch something interesting.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
From another source:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/lazyjock/117509.flv
Using Amazon S3 is pretty good way to ensure that when this gets modded +5, it's still available.
I'd hate to be the guy who's paying the bill on that bucket...
People shouldn't be watching videos of a tragic event like this.
Who are you, and why are you deciding what should I watch?
The IOC hours after the deadly crash immediately said (before an legitimate investigation could even begin, let alone finish) that it was the luger's fault, and that there was nothing wrong with the course, even though there were numerous complaints about the course prior to the crash. So even though the IOC said there was nothing wrong with the course, and that it was luger-error, they immediately wrapped the posts with pads, built taller walls throughout the the course, and then started the lugers lower down on the course, in order to slow them down.
I'm sorry, but you don't get to say, "The course is fine," and then also get to change it immediately after a crash.
I love to watch the Olympic athletes compete, but the IOC has been a bunch of corrupt bastards for decades.
It's in the interest of Olympic athletes to keep it online so everyone can see that the track was badly designed. They built one of the fastest luge tracks ever and just assumed that nobody would ever jump the wall. They were tragically wrong, and it was avoidable. Wrapping the steel pole he collided with in foam would probably have been sufficient to save his life, though he wouldn't have escaped without injury. Installing a higher section of non-iced wall, possibly made of clear plastic, would have prevented him from colliding with the pole at all. He might have been able to finish the track, and his time would have been abysmal for making the mistake he made that took him off the ice, but at least he would have lived.
But you don't have to take my word for it, because the video is online and you can watch what happens and judge for yourself.
Alternatively, if you don't care what happens to Olympic athletes, the video is online, so you don't have to see it if you don't specifically follow a link.
Being Canadian he is under no obligation to enforce or even care about the laws in the U.S. or OZ for that matter. While I find it a little distasteful it's his right and if the blogger wants to put it up there then more power to him.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
And yet, here we are discussing it. I think it is fine for pillars to be that close, on a track for a sport that is participated in voluntarily and with full knowledge that those pillars are there. All it would have taken is for the lugers to say "we aren't going down that course with those pillars there", if it were so clear that the pillars shouldn't have been there.
It is absolute stupid the way the track was designed and that is the flaw. The guy would not have died if its was not for the pillars.
The guy would not have died if he didn't get on a tiny little sled and push himself down the start of an icy half-tube where the only exit other than the far end was off the side and into hard metal objects.
Lugers can still die if they take a wall too high and capsize, smashing their heads into the solid ice track.
If you want to remove all means of death in the sport of luge, you might as well not luge at all. In fact, you won't be luging. You'll have to have a solid tube filled with soft water (instead of the open ice-caked half-tube). That's the "thrill ride" at a water park. How exciting. And someone could still drown if they aren't careful.
You could compare that to have trees around a racing circuit directly beside the track and no run off area ...
How about solid concrete walls at most car race tracks?
Bugger off IOC and let the rest of the world see what is wrong so it can be prevented next time.
Next on NBC, the 2046 winter olympics. At 8PM, the US and Canada face off for the snowball fights, followed by the mackeral slapping contest between Great Britain and France. At 11PM, Greece and Latvia compete in 'walk around the block', and then Bolivia and Japan face off in a rematch of the famous 2042 "fill the slurpee cup as full as you can without spilling" contest. Stay tuned...
This assumes that the sun would not exist were it not for you, so that you could actually copyright the sun and all audio-visual representations thereof.
I guess I'll know for sure tomorrow, because it's night time here now. If the sun doesn't come up tomorrow, I'll know I violated the DRM you put on it...
The fact that the sun came up three weeks ago isn't news anymore, just like the fact that someone rammed themselves into a pole on the luge course two weeks ago isn't. The "news" value of the video is gone; it is solely the gruesome nature that remains as a draw.
What's the non-emotional reason for not showing the video? I haven't seen anything except "Oh, gee, that's in poor taste", which is not anything more than an appeal to emotion.
I was hoping for better here, honestly.
It is wrong to have pillars that close to the track and Stephen Plate shows this to the rest of the world. Period! No discussion!
And yet, here we are discussing it. I think it is fine for pillars to be that close, on a track for a sport that is participated in voluntarily and with full knowledge that those pillars are there. All it would have taken is for the lugers to say "we aren't going down that course with those pillars there", if it were so clear that the pillars shouldn't have been there.
Of course the athletes can choose not to participate. However, most athletes have been training for years for this event, so the threshold for not participating is really high, even if they had a pool of sharks with friggin lasers at the bottom. Just because you don't have to participate, doesn't mean that the security measures can be inadequate. Simply raising the walls doesn't make the sport equivalent to kitten hugging
Two points:
The IOC could still get their advertising revenues, and even direct-charge viewers. These seem like blindingly obvious ideas.
Why haven't they done this yet?
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.